1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a connector apparatus, and more particularly to a connector apparatus used in computer system.
2. General Background
The demands of emerging peripheral Input/Output devices exceed the capability of the traditional PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) bus. Technical innovations such as faster CPU front side bus speeds, faster memory speeds, high-performance graphics, faster networking devices, faster storage devices, high-speed consumer devices and other market requirements will drive the need for much greater internal system bandwidth.
So some high-speed buses are invented and used according to better signal transmission standards. For example, the PCI-X bus following PCI-X signal transmission standard is developed on the base of the PCI bus. The PCI-X bus has higher frequency and wider bus width than the PCI bus, so PCI-X bus has higher throughput. Another high speed bus that is widely used is PCI Express (PCI-E) bus following PCI-E signal transmission standard. PCI-E establishes a point-to-point connection from chip to chip, or chip to adapter on motherboard. This full-duplex, dedicated, scalable lane bus increases bandwidth, decreases latency, and allows devices to perform as they were meant to. A single lane (X1) of PCI-E has a bandwidth of 250 MB/sec. By running multiple lanes, (up to X32), the bandwidth increases arithmetically.
Users often hope to define more high-speed connectors in the motherboard to support peripheral devices. But the scale of the motherboard is limited, there is not enough space to set enough high speed connectors on the motherboard.
What is needed, therefore, is a connector apparatus of a connection system, such as a riser card and a riser card slot that can be used to transfer different kinds of signals, such as PCI-E signals and PCI-X signals, to corresponding cards.